Leonardo ISAST and USF invite you to a meeting of the Leonardo Art/Science community.
See below for location and agenda.

The event is free and open to everybody.
Email me if you want to be added to the mailing list for the LASERs.

Like previous evenings,
the agenda includes some presentations of art/science projects,
news from the audience, and time for casual socializing/networking.

In order to facilitate the networking, feel free to send me the URL of a webpage that describes your work or the organization you work for. I will publish
a list on this webpage before the day of the event so that everybody can check
what everybody else is doing. (Not mandatory, just suggested).

Alan Cooper and Julianne Stafford (U.S. Geological Survey) on "Cultural perspectives of Science in Antarctica"
An exploration through narrative, images and live music of the past and the future of Antarctic studies for scientists and artists before and after the Antarctic Treaty.

7:10-7:35:
Luciano Chessa (San Francisco Conservatory) on "Music the Dead can Hear: Occult Presences in the Art of Noises"
A critical analysis of Italian futurist painter, composer, and builder of musical instruments Luigi Russolo and his relationship to the occult arts

7:35-7:50: BREAK. Before or after the break, anyone in the audience currently working within the intersections of art and science will have 30 seconds to share their work. Please present your work as a teaser so that those who are interested can seek you out during social time following the event.

7:50-8:15:

Leonard Pitt (Flying Actor Studio) on "The Art of the Body, The Art of the Pen"
The art of physical theatre through a collection of character masks and how the discipline of moving one's body can teach one how to become a writer."

8:15-8:45:

Randal Koene (Carboncopies) on "Why and how to transition from wet-ware to substrate-independent minds"
Our minds are run on a machine composed of wet-ware that we describe as the brain. Substrate-independent minds are the route by which we can achieve pattern survival for our species in a competitive universe.

8:45:
Piero Scaruffi on the next Leonardo Art/Science evening
I will simply preview the line-up of speakers for the next Leonardo evening.

8:45pm-9:30pm: Discussions, more socializing
You can mingle with the speakers and the audience

Bios:

Alan Cooper is an emeritus scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey and consulting professor at Stanford. He has 28 years experience working on Antarctic studies and heads the Antarctic Seismic Data Library System for Cooperative Research under the 1959 Antarctic Treaty. He has published more than 250 research papers. Alan is also co-concertmaster of the California Pops Orchestra and performs with the Left Bank trio and Fiume di Musica.

Luciano Chessa is a composer, conductor, pianist, and musical saw/Vietnamese dan bau soloist who has been active in Europe, the U.S., and Australia. Recent premieres include a large orchestral work commissioned by the Orchestra Filarmonica of Torino "Ragazzi Incoscienti Scarabocchiano Sulla Porta Di Un Negozio Fallito" "TomBoy" for piano and a video by Terry Berlier, and "Movements", a multimedia work for 16mm film, dan bau and amplified film projectors produced in collaboration with filmmaker Rick Bahto. Chessa has just composed "Come un'Infanzia", a guitar + string quartet piece for the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, and is collaborating with performance artist Kalup Linzy and the Ensemble Parallele on an opera commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art to be premiered at YBCA in August 2011. As a music historian Chessa has written "Luigi Russolo Futurista. Noise, Visual Arts, and the Occult" (UC Press). In 2009 Chessa supervised the first reconstruction of Russolo's "intonarumori" orchestra.

Randal Koene heads the organization carboncopies.org, which is the outreach and roadmapping organization for action towards Advancing Substrate-Independent Minds (ASIM). Dr. Koene is a neuroscientist and neuroengineer, and he is director of the Analysis team at the nanotechnology company Halcyon Molecular in Silicon Valley. Between 2008 and 2010, Koene was director of the Department of Neuroengineering at Tecnalia, the third largest private research organization in Europe. Dr. Koene has been involved with organized research in artificial general intelligence (AGI) since the first AGI conference in 2008.

Leonard Pitt is an actor, author and teacher. He originally studied mime in Paris with Etienne Decroux in the 1960s and settled in Berkeley in 1970. He has performed and taught around the world. He currently operates The Flying Actor Studio in San Francisco offering a one-year conservatory program in the art of physical theatre. He has written three books about Paris, Walks Through Lost Paris, Paris a Journey Through Time, and Paris Postcards, the Golden Age, plus A Small Moment of Great Illumination about the life of Valentine Greatrakes, a 17th century Irish healer.

Piero Scaruffi is a cognitive scientist who has lectured in three continents and published several books on Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science, the latest one being "The Nature of Consciousness" (2006). He pioneered Internet applications in the early 1980s and the use of the World-Wide Web for cultural purposes in the mid 1990s. His poetry has been awarded several national prizes in Italy and the USA. His latest book of poems and meditations is "Synthesis" (2009). As a music historian, he has published ten books, the latest ones being "A History of Rock and Dance Music" (2009) and "A History of Jazz Music" (2007). He has also written extensively about cinema, literature and the visual arts. An avid traveler, he has visited 121 countries of the world.

Julianne Stafford was the co-founder of a private consulting firm for investing in natural resources and have a long and varied musical backgrounds in classical and popular music. Stafford also perform with the Left Bank trio and Fiume di Musica.